


Not Made of Tin

by Nope



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-04
Updated: 2009-01-04
Packaged: 2018-11-02 23:04:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10954581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nope/pseuds/Nope
Summary: Mickey has a message to deliver.





	Not Made of Tin

would like you," he says, "to deliver

.

There's percussion in his head, drum-roll overdrive, lights flashing red-blue. Mickey stumbles into the wall and retches. The ground tries to throw him off. His heart is bursting in his chest - he clutches his arms across his ribs to hold it in - and just before he falls he thinks he sees Rose, blonde, blank-faced Rose, silent Rose, silhouetted against the siren-lights and he tries to ask her where Jake is but there's only noise and darkness.

.

Three years before this, he comes awake, startled into the sudden chill of the back of the van. He can't hear, can't remember the noise that brought him out of the dark into this bleary half-light, tinted, smeared windows and Jake snuffle-snoring in the front seat, but there are seabird screeches and the faint rough hum of traffic and he has the strangest craving for ice-cream, proper fake soft Mister Whippy style ice-cream, all chemicals and sugar buzz cold. They should sell that on the sea-front, he reckons. That's what people do, even in foreign parts. Assuming they even have ice-cream in this damn dimension and, if they don't, he's going to invent it and make a fucking fortune. How hard can it be?

Everything complains when he stretches, but he's been hungover on too many mates' couches to put up with that nonsense, so he just ignores it, shaking himself out like a -- like a person who is resolutely not a dog does, thanks. He pulls his coat on, and his shoes, which he should have just kept on over night because it's like sticking his feet in ice-buckets, and scrambles out onto the street, bouncing on the spot, trying to get some feeling back. He has no idea where he is and even if he did, he's pretty sure he wouldn't be able to pronounce it, but it might as well be Brighton for how it looks, bit of a concrete promenade, pebble beach, a few of those groyne things they use to keep long-shore drift down, thank you GCSE Geography.

There's no one around, no-one to test his "Bonjour" on which, along with "merci" and "volez vous couche avec moi?" exhausts his grasp of the finer points on French. Instead he comes around to the front of the van and then around the front to the passenger door, rather than get in. Keep his legs moving, maybe his freezer-block shoes will thaw a bit. Jake's got his head turned into his shoulder, eyes closed, mouth open, just a little. He has long eyelashes and suddenly Mickey wants to put his hands in Jake's hair, to rub across Jake's scalp and see whether the gel crackles like frost under his fingers or if the hair is soft and fuzzy. He doesn't, of course, because he wouldn't and, anyway, there's a window in the way, which he raps on, smartly, one, two, three-four.

Jake jerks awake, arms going every which way as his head whips around.

"Morning," Mickey says when sleep-wild eyes finally turn his way.

There's a long moment before recognition sets in and then another before recognition really sets in.

"Fuck," says Jake.

Jake is not a morning person. A lot of things about Jake, Mickey has learned indirectly, by osmosis and speculation -- Jake keeps slipping, talking as if Mickey should already know everything he's not saying because everyone else, i.e., Rickey, does (did), because this isn't Mickey's world and he's gone back to being a social retard, like he's six again with the safety scissors and the glitter -- but the one thing he has learned, personally, like, is that for the first twenty, thirty minutes after waking up, Jake is a cantankerous, foul-mouthed, immature bastard. And Mickey thinks that maybe there is something fundamentally wrong with himself, because he's starting to find it cute.

He winds the window down. "D'ya see metal or something?"

"Nah." Mickey shakes his head. "I was up, is all."

Jake gives him a look. There are real live aliens who can actually kill like that. Mickey gets the urge to reach out and ruffle those sweet blond spikes again.

"I'm gonna get us some ice-cream," Mickey says instead.

It's, like, sublimating or something. One of those things those shrinks on the chat shows always say. Transference, or whatever. Jake is still staring at him like he is the idiotest idiot to ever idiot

"It's fucking freezing," Jake says.

"Yeah." Mickey nods.

"It's six in the fucking morning," Jake adds.

Mickey nods again, although it's really gone eight. They haven't changed the clocks since they left England.

"Fuck," says Jake, falling back in his seat, eyes closed. "You are so fucking weird." But he's smiling when he says it, so that's okay.

"Pretty much," Mickey says, smiling too. "Back in a bit."

He's ten feet away when Jake sticks his head out of the window and yells, "and get me a fucking flake!" after him.

.

o no no!" Rose's fingers bite into his arms. "Stay with me, Mi

.

When he asks to come with them, Rose doesn't smile at all, but Mickey still feels one in his head, indulgent, like someone patting a puppy, and he feels proud of himself ("good boy") and a little disgusted all at once. He thinks it'll go away, but it never does, watching the two of them, laughing and moving together, conspiratorial at the console. He thinks about other things, about five-dimensional mercurial engines, about the groan as they go super-chronic (the Doctor stares at him blankly, and never explains properly), about the way he's sure the damn ship is breathing around him. He thinks about spaceships in the fifty-whatever century, about magic doors and French Queens.

He almost ices Rose with a super-future-fire-extinguisher and gets chained to a table by robots made of cogwheels and crazy and they get nick-of-time-hah!-rescued and he thinks about how this is her life, their life, how this is his life now. Mickey Smith, in the TARDIS, with the Doctor and Rose. This is what he wanted, what he wants. Space and time and adventures and aliens and all that wonder, all those things out there, so far from London and council flats and that stupid exhaust he'd have to refurbish when they went back.

If, he tries to think. If we go back.

But even after all the fuss has died down, guiding Rose away from the grieving Doctor, all he can hear is clockwork counting down, tick tick ticking his time away.

.

There's a thick, furry feeling to his tongue that has Mickey gasping for water before he's even half-awake. A cup appears at his lips - thin plastic, disposable, and the water is tepid and a little medicinal tasting - and he takes a grateful gulp, then a noise of protest as it is taken away again.

"Sip slowly," someone says, calm, reasonable, so he does.

There's a curl of hair, light, and he tries to lift his hand to rub his eyes but it only gets half-way up before he's pulled short. Something clanks, metal on metal. Chain, he thinks blearily, and then, handcuffs? What the hell was he doing last

(Jake jerks and gasps under his hands)

night?

"Jake?" he asks. "What's--?" His arm comes up short again and he jumps when there are fingers on him but they're just removing the restraints and, when he can see properly, it's to find Rose placing them on a side-table.

"We had to tie you down," she says, her back to him, "so you wouldn't hurt yourself. You were..."

He waits for her to say what, and when she doesn't, he says, "Rose?"

.

(I love you, she says, but only when they're fucking. My Mickey.)

.

In the red-brown half-light, the pale man smiles the way real people don't.

.

It gets easier, mostly because the guns get bigger and sometimes actually work and when they get the last conversion center in Vienna, shooting out the blades a hairsbreadth over a screaming seven-year old girl whose parents are, amazingly, still actually alive, when they do this last, brilliant, perfect thing, Mickey laughs and kisses Jake right there in the middle of all the dead metal and then feels a complete shit about it.

"Sorry," he says, looking everywhere else.

"Why?" Jake asks, looking at him like he's stupid.

Jake does this a lot. Mickey thinks it might be because he actually isn't all that smart, even if he has saved the entire world and maybe even the whole universe.

Also, he doesn't know how to answer the question, so he says, "I don't know."

"Give us a hand, then," Jake says, starting to pull things apart, like people snog him in the middle of war-zones all the time.

Which they better bloody not do, Mickey thinks, and bangs his head on his gun.

"You really are a pillock," Jake says, but he's smiling, so Mickey smiles too, even though his heart's pounding nineteen to the dozen in his ears.

.

As soon as they're gone, those Cybermen they corralled instead of killing, because they were people once and you were supposed to make nice, although Mickey had seen them get themselves back and not one had wanted to be a brain welded into a metal suit, so, actually, killing them would have been far more merciful, but the only people he has to say this to already agree with him, so there you go. As soon as they're gone, he knows where. Not for certain, obviously, not for real, but he knows. It doesn't matter how well you fill the cracks in. You always know they were there.

"Now, then," Pete says, "we might actually have a clue. Some of the boffins we liberated from Torchwood--"

"Fuckmonkeys," Jake says under his breath, and Mickey tries not to laugh.

They're sat in Torchwood tower, which they've recently acquired. Posh talk for "nicked from a bunch of evil world-conquering twats who didn't even have the excuse of being brains in a suit". To be fair, most of the lower level Torchwood personnel hadn't been evil exactly, so much as just really screwed up people too stuck on scatology and cheap sex to do any real conquering type stuff. There's a half-made infrasonic bomb on level sixteen that never got finished because the main researcher was a Tantra devotee and her and her team had found all sorts of interesting uses for vibrating things.

Mickey thinks about screwdrivers and shifts in his seat, earning a speculative look from Jake, whose leg is pressed against his, and an annoyed glare from Pete.

"--to another dimension," Pete says.

"I'll go," someone says, and Mickey's looking around to see who it was before he realises it was himself. "Er."

Jake moves his leg away.

"Everyone's going," Pete says. "Once we have a team together."

"Yeah," says Mickey and nods, but his mouth keeps on going with, "you'll need someone to go through first, though, catch the lay of the land. And I know the Doctor. He won't be far away."

Jake crosses his arms over his chest. Pete looks at him speculatively.

"Yeah," he says. "Alright, Mickey. So you can bring the Doctor to us."

His tone goes mocking when he says 'the Doctor', and Mickey pretends not to know why, or why Jake isn't looking at him any more, because, really, it's true, the Doctor is what they need, right now, it's imperative, but all he can think of is, Rose, Rose, back to Rose; Rose, Rose, back to Rose;

.

clattering over the tracks, and he's drunk and in a railway motel room with a guy, and it's not exactly the first time, really, but it's close enough and it's weird, because he's drunk, and because he can't remember the guy's name even though he knows he's been told it twice at least, and especially because the guy in question hasn't taken off his gloves and he's saying, "tell me about her. This lost girl of yours."

"Blonde," Mickey says, swallowing. "She's blonde. She's--"

He's talking about her smile when his T-shirt comes off, about Jimmy Stone when his trousers come off, about the noises she makes as you fuck her when his boxers go down, about how she's fuck up for a bit of please back door shenanigans yes if you work nng her guh up a bit.

"I do like a bit of shenanigans," the man says, lips curling, lifting wet gloved fingers to Mickey's mouth.

"I don't do this," Mickey says, desperately, because he can't quite remember why. "I'm not like this."

The man pushes him down on the bed. It's orange and it's tacky and it vibrates if you stick two pound coins in the slot. Mickey tries to think, but there's eight pints in him at least, and hands on him, and smiling lips against his ear saying, all silky smooth, "let me tell you what you are

.

Mickey leaves the white lab coat where she can grab it, and grins all the way down the corridor, knowing she'll follow right after him.

.

"You know me and Rose were over years ago, right?" Mickey asks, leaning against the door-frame.

"I know you're not Ricky," Jake says, not looking up. "So, just. Fuck off, okay? We're cool. It's not a thing."

"I'm saying," Mickey says, not coming in, not going away either, "that you don't-- You don't have to be jealous, or anything. I mean." He takes a deep breath, lets it out. "One blond is enough."

"Hers comes out of a bottle," Jake says, snide, but he looks up at Mickey for a moment.

"So, yeah," Mickey says, because he's a bit crap at this, and he doesn't think Jake will fall for his usual, go out and get drunk and fall together thing, which is a shame because it worked so well before. "And-- I dunno. Can I come in, or what?"

.

It feels like being stabbed ("bad dog") when the TARDIS groans and fades away, but also better, that sick feeling of ever-closing doom gone, which is a bit stupid on account of Cybermen, and he thinks, this is my purpose now. This is. And he gets in the van.

.

deliver a message to my dear

.

In a way, Mickey thinks, he is with Rose now. Both of them, locked in the same universe, together forever. Not in that way, of course, but close enough. Which probably just went to show you shouldn't get what you wanted, but if it did, he was ignoring that advice because, okay, yeah, he was mostly straight, but there was a scale to these things, and it wasn't like it was the first time, not really.

Anyway, it's Jake who pushes him against the wall and smirks into the kiss in a way that's indecently familiar.

.

go with her," the man says, and Mickey whimpers, "when she comes back; with both of them; I would like you to

.

"I," Mickey says, and clears his throat. "Can-- May I have some more water, please?"

Rose pushes the cup closer. Mickey picks it up, has to use both hands to steady it, chokes when he tries to swallow.

"We had to sedate you," she says. She doesn't touch him. Not once. "You were in, the doctors called it a fugue. M

.

ickey," Jake moans, and they're fumbling at each other's trousers, it's pathetic, like they're teenagers, like, what do you expect from grown men playing at superheroes?

It's been too long. It feels like he's been waiting for this forever. Waiting for things to align, like big clockwork cogs, ticking into place, and the hands are together and the big bell is sounding, bong, bong, bong, and Mickey giggles, but it's okay, because Jake is laughing too, softly.

"You are such a prat, Mickey Smith," he says.

"I think I love you," Mickey says, because inappropriately timed confessions are clearly his thing.

"Yeah," Jake says, grinning ear to ear. "I know. Such a prat."

Mickey really, really wants to touch him, and he can, so he does and Jake's spikes are just the right sort of fuzzy-soft.

.

his hands twitch

.

"We had to stop you hurting yourself," Rose says.

.

("good boy")

.

"It wasn't you," Rose insists.

.

Jake tumbles with him into the bed and they're both naked, somehow, which is good, fuck is it good, pressed together, head to toe, dark and light, rutting against each other.

"I want," Mickey says.

And Jake says, "fuck yeah," reaching out blindly for the bedside cabinet, fumbling in the draw, all rustle and clatter.

They go rolling again, and Mickey comes out on top, and there's lube and condoms, plural, which is good, because that means they can go again and again, just as soon as he can get this fucking foil open.

"Prat," says Jake, voice thick, and takes it from him, and does it for him, open and on and sliding down, slick latex and hot fingers, voice gently mocking. "You have done this before, right?"

"Yeah," Mickey says, and then, "not like this. I mean--"

"Shut up and fuck," Jake says, and his eyes are wide and dark, his skin flushed and his legs spread and, Mickey's so hard it hurts.

.

leather-clad fingers trailing down his spine, and Mickey says "oh" in a really small voice, and his hands fist the sheets and the bed shakes and that silken voice says "that's my good boy" in his ear as he jerks and jerks and soaks the pillow under him

.

Jake's hot and tight and squeezing around him in a way that really isn't doing anything for Mickey's longevity but is doing everything for his cock and lights going off in the back of his head which really can't be healthy, but, god, fuck, who fucking cares, just, fuck, fuck, fuck!

"I love you," Jake says in his ear. "My Mickey."

He's smiling, and it fills Mickey's head, the world gone away in white noise and the rhythmic wet slap, slap, slap of their bodies and he lifts a hand to push sweat-slick hair back of Jake's forehead, and follow it down, fingers curving against Jake's skull, against the back of Jake's neck, as he smiles, and Jake smiles, and he thrusts, and thrusts, and thrusts and gasps and

.

squeeze

.

The cup, thin, cheap plastic, breaks in his hand, water going over the sheets.

"Should have seen the signs," Rose is saying, and, "Manchurian candidate" and "triggered the suggestion".

.

and comes and

.

"It wasn't you," Rose says.

Mickey can't breath. There's a stone on his chest. A monolith.

"It wasn't you," Rose insists.

"What did you-- What did I--" He screams it at her. "What did I do?!"

.

that little blonde you love so much," the man says, and smiles his happy shark smile, "and put your hands around her pretty white throat and

.

(Jake jerks and gasps under his hands)

.

o no no!" Rose's fingers bite into his arms. "Stay with me, Mickey!"

He shoves her off, tries to get out of the bed. The door bursts open, there are men, large men, holding him back. Hands all over him. A glint of a needle. Rose backs away, and he lunges, and they grab him, hold him, stick him, and Rose is still backing away, so far away, and Mickey's screaming and screaming "Where's Jake? Where's Jake?! WHERE'S JAKE?!" into the rising blood-tinged darkness.

.

The message is late, of course, and delivered to the wrong address, but what can you expect from the British postal system?

.

One universe over, Mister Saxon smiles and smiles and smiles.


End file.
